Blog entry for:

from active addiction is: thinking that failure is just part of my makeup. one might have thought, that by now, all of that garbage had been pitched into the dustbin of my personal history and yet, as i sat this morning, what bubbled up to the surface was the notion that any success i may have had, will be short-lived and i will end up in the same place from where i started. when i share that some times the life i have feels like a wonderful dream and that i am actually in a coma in some long-term care facility due to an accidental overdose, it is the notion that people like me do not get clean and have “real” lives.
perhaps after a several thousand days clean, it is time to stop romanticizing and look at the reality, thinking that i am not present in a physical sens is certainly a romantic notion, albeit not a savory one. i know that wearing the cloak of failure is part of my protection strategy. if i see that the glass is always filled with failure, and minimize my successes, i keep myself from hoping for even more and feeling let down when it does not come to pass. it is only the optimist that feels the sting of failure, as the pessimist will never see anything but failure. that pattern became deeply ingrained in me, during the decades of active addiction, so it is no winder that it still rears its ugly head, now and again.
this morning, as i sit here, i am beginning to get a sense of the wonder of recovery. the fact that i have stayed clean for as many days as i have, is in and of itself a success. sure i had help from the POWER that fuels my recovery and my peers, but the willingness to stick this out, after the consequences of using were no longer part of my life, is a success from within me. i am the one who chooses to stay clean. i am the one who practices a program of active recovery in my life, including dragging my a$$ across twelve miles of snowy and ice-packed roads to attend my home group. all of this and so much more comes from the success i have had, as a result of that decision. all those years ago, to extricate myself from the justice system and find the means to become a citizen, to stop living as a walking failure, as it were. as i wrap this up, i guess it is time to stop looking for what is no longer the driving force in my life and allow myself to open up to the new, it is after all a good day to be clean.

∞ DT ∞